Hipster complains to local magazine that used his photo to show how hipsters all look alike, only it wasn't actually him

Gideon Litchfield, editor in chief of MIT Technology Review, recounts how the other day, they got an angry message from some guy about how they'd used his photo to illustrate an article about research at Brandeis that tried to explain "the hipster effect" - how non-conformists often wind up looking the same.

The man declared the use of his image was slander and he never would have given his permission to have his visage used that way.

Turns out, though, the magazine licensed a stock photo of a young bearded guy in a knit cap and sort of plaid shirt. An editor checked with the photo company, which supplied the subject's name and it wasn't the guy who complained.

QED, Litchfield concludes:

All of which just proves the story we ran: Hipsters look so much alike that they can’t even tell themselves apart from each other.

Comments

i think at first hipsters were just trust-fund kids with mullets in Brooklyn; that was the early 2000's; then, they started to make stuff, like soap, and artisanal pizza and artisanal helping old ladies cross the street, and artisanal sunshine; now, with the social justice movement nearing full sail, i think hipsters, such as we knew them, are passe. you can actually have a purpose these days, because that's become cool again; not how you flare you nostrils in rage to belong. but fuck what do i know

I think that may be true, at first. But I am not-infrequently accused of being a hipster*, I hang out with hipsters sometimes (and used to a lot more), and I never met anyone like that. Of course we were all bike hipsters on our sweet fixies and/or or music hipsters in bands- there are so many sub-sub-cultures now.

...is that whole "winter knit cap as hip fashion statement all year round" thing, This unfortunate practice began in the grunge era circa 1990 and has not abated. It must be hot as hell in the summer. The mirror image of this is the clowns who wear baggy shorts all year round, including winter, as a hipster statement.

There was a reddit thread a while ago about stupid stuff you did as a teen and some kid wrote about how he wore this knit wool hat everywhere and all year round. So now there's not a single photo of him from several years where he isn't wearing it and every time he sees one it now makes him cringe. So when you see those kids just keep it in the back of their mind that they are likely to end up the same way.

If you were a working class guy working mostly outdoors in the Pacific Northwest - particularly in the coast range - grunge was never a statement. It was your work uniform.

My grandfather wore that "look" most of his life, as did his brothers who were loggers and sawmill workers. My dad wore it too. It is incredibly practical to layer up when your day starts setting chokers in the fog and 45F and ends at 65F with wild swings in between.

In the 90s, I took pictures of the windows on Newbury Street and sent them to my uncles and cousins, who were very amused at how fashionable they were!

It makes sense when you work in a temperate rainforest under chilly but not cold conditions year-around.

In a similar fashion (pun), my father always told us to put our grungy clothes on once we were home from school or it was the weekend and we were working in the yard. Didn't want to destroy our Sunday finest.

I agree. Hipsters DO look alike. I've always felt (IHMO) that hipsters try so damn hard NOT to be that way, that in the end they are just apart of mainstream culture now and end up just being another 'genre'.

I remember when hipsterism was only 18-22 yo college kids and it faded after they graduated. Now I Know 50 year old hipsters (or ones who fit the bill)

Reminds me of...
"Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform. Don't kid yourself." --Frank Zappa, responding to an outburst in the crowd in which some audience members (presumably fashionably attired "hippies") were giving a hard time to a man in uniform.

Old Men Chasing Young Women into places like Wild Orchids,
designers, artists and architects wearing black to show how unique they are,
Insecure Young People wearing the same fashion to be hip and different,
and Gold Diggers.

When I see a 20 something with a 2/3 shaved head and a combover, that's when I'll
believe you don't care what society thinks of you.

It is possible that there was somewhat more depth to the beat movement and to the subsequent hippie movement than to today's hipsters. At it's best (and I know it wasn't all "best") the hippies and beats were searching for a higher consciousness/spirituality and something new. The best definition I have heard of "hipster" however, is "a nostalgia for something they never experienced in the first place". Hipster seems to be all "surface" and irony rather than depth. Things that beats and hippies took seriously, hipsters find desirable because it is "kitsch". See the difference?

Someone once called my attention to a photo of me sitting in the front row of a large crowd in a park. I said, yes, that looks like me, but what event is this photo from? When the answer turned out to be a classical music concert in New York City's Central Park, I had to reply that I had never been to such an event -- so that wasn't really me, even though both he and I first thought it was.